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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
#484 | Mark Greaney | Bullets and Books The Intersection of Guns and Literature | w/ A.M Adair
Mark joins us for an explosive conversation where we blast through the world of shooting sports with the zeal of true enthusiasts. We're not just talking about our favorite firearms, like the trusty Glock 19 or the sleek allure of SIGs; we're taking you behind the scenes of an electrifying Nashville run-and-gun event that partners authors with real-life operators. Expect to be right on target with insights into the perishable skill of shooting, laughs over the sticker-shock prices of premium guns, and the meticulous care authors like Mark take in arming their characters with just the right firepower.
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Welcome to the protectors podcast. You know we have to hit that record button. Mark Rainey's here today with a Maderra, but we're. You know we almost started talking about one of my favorite topics, which is guns, guns, guns, guns. So guys like AM knows. But, mark, I think you run an email chain. We're putting together a shooting event in the Nashville area this summer with authors like team up an author with like a, an operator, an LEO or something like that and do some shooting. So you were more than welcome to come and run in gun.
Speaker 2:If I can. I live three hours away from Nashville, so it's not really that far away for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to be fun, man, and we're, we're gonna once the logistics are getting into it, you will know and then everybody else will know. I just think it's so cool when authors are like embrace firearms and shooting sports, and just how fun they really are. It's not always about just, you know, violence, it's a, it's a sport man, and you, you know just as well as I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a perishable skill, so I never shoot enough. But I have a nice range here in Memphis and my buddy, Josh Hood I think you know Josh Hood he and I go shoot. And I have another buddy who's a down in Mississippi and he's SWAT guy and so I go down to their range and shoot a lot. So I say a lot, but I've been so busy with work I probably've done it eight times in the past year or something like that. No, you got it, I got to do more.
Speaker 1:What is that? Those are rookie numbers. And Josh, let's talk about Josh Hood for a second. Josh thrown me under the bus the other day online saying you need a staccato. And I'm like, bro, I'm like I'm retired now. I can't afford this staccato, right out of the gate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're pricey guns, they're nice, though Josh has one and I held that thing in my hands and I was like, ooh, I get it. You know it's pretty nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been. You know it's crazy Cause I think about two or three episodes ago that you came on. We're talking about Glocks and you know I carried Glocks for a long time in my career Glock 19s but I ended up just trading one of my buddies and I got a Glock 17 for competition and to teach people how to competition shoot, and that's just. You know it's an old, reliable, but the first thing I did was I swapped that to trigger and sites and everything like that. But they're they're decent guns when you, when you make them decent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I think so too I. My Glock 19 that I bought in 2004 is still like my go-to gun. I've got you know, newer and better stuff, I guess, but that's just the most reliable thing I've ever owned in my entire life.
Speaker 1:It's like common at Tupperware and you know it's so easy to change out triggers and everything nowadays to make them like kind of like the competent gun that you want that you would rely on. So it's pretty cool man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've always been team SIG, and I think that's probably what we do, though is, when we start writing our stories, we kind of you gravitate towards the things that you like best, and so SIG always inevitably ends up in my stories. But for you, mark, you court tends to like the foreign models, so yeah, so he, he's been a Glock guy from the beginning.
Speaker 2:I actually carry a SIG now and I always want my other characters to carry different things because I don't want to just get to I just don't want to say the word Glock 93 times in a book. So there's all sorts of different. I'm always trying to find something that just seems like that character would carry it, even if it's like a Steyr or, you know, like a Tavor, you know like something that's maybe a little bit avant-garde, but there's a reason for it. You know in my brain why that character would carry that weapon.
Speaker 3:It makes sense, but it adds an extra little like reality, that nuance to it. I think it's just. It makes court come alive for us a little bit more. To have him not be your typical, typical shooter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he's not. He's not flashy about it at all.
Speaker 1:You know, going back and starting going all the way back to the origins of court, I like it. You know, at first, like I used to always think, I'm like, oh, these guys have to be like you know, they have to come from like SEAL, team Six, this and that and everything. And I was telling the story offline to Mark once that I met some people who worked for a certain agency who were, you know, high up in there and they weren't. You know they were, they were right at the tip, but they didn't come from those types of backgrounds, right, and that they were recruited. And that's what I love about Getting into, like my personal world and understanding the realities and then seeing court and be like you know what that is real, that can happen and I've seen it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted him to be not pulled out of the military For the simple reason that I just knew that was gonna be done a lot. You know, this was the war on terror. I'm like there's gonna be a ton of, you know, navy SEALs and Delta dudes and Rangers and Marsock or whatever coming out of this and being writers and they're gonna have their characters. So what's different about mine? And you know I'd say I created him at the time I was going to firearm schools like every weekend and sometimes during the week Doing a lot of training. So I just got the idea that you know, he's trained up because his dad owned one of these schools and then he's sort of like head-hunted by the agency.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I just, you know, in two books ago I wrote a book called Sierra 6 where it goes back into his past and he, you know, is working with all these other guys on his team and they're all SEALs or or Delta or whatever. And you know I like that sort of culture, cultural differences between the military guys and the non-military guy. I Was like an interesting point of tension for me. It was fun to write about.
Speaker 1:You know I'm glad you brought up Sierra 6 because I would love to see. Sierra 6 is like a TV miniseries, kind of like the original, like you know the original stories. But then you know you maybe do you like this year. And that's what's great about Sierra 6, it's like it is a time hop back and forth, back and forth. Yeah, you can really get into it. I would love to see that. One is you know the gray man series.
Speaker 2:I would. I would too. They they're doing a second film and I know what book that it is. They said they were doing, but I don't think I'm allowed to say. But I haven't read the script so I don't even know if it's. You know how close it is to the actual book. But it's interesting to see the choices they make and and why they make them. So I'll be like anybody else when they announce that the movie is gonna get, you know, shot, I'll find out on the internet, just like everybody else. Because the last time with Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling, the big Netflix announcement I'd heard rumors for probably about six months that Ryan Gosling was, they say, circling the project, which is like this term that I've been hearing for like 12 years, and it and to me it meant that you know, here's the name of a guy that's not going to do it, because I just been through that for so long Brad Pitt. Back in 2011, charlie's there and they rewrote the entire story.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, or a female lead and and many other people, like they gave it to Tom Cruise at one point and I Feel like Bradley Cooper and Hemsworth and all these different you saw, just every time I'd hear something. And then I heard Gosling and I just like, okay, whatever you know, thanks for letting me know. And and then my agent called me one day, july of 2020, and said, hey, have you, have you checked your email? And I checked it. It was just, it was a link to deadline or variety or something, and I clicked on it and I've saw, I learned. I learned the same time everybody else did.
Speaker 1:I think it's perfect casting for him Because you know you have someone who was a child actor, who grew up and you watched him grow up and you kind of see his range. But then you know, you look at the other other things that are going on right now too, like the Reacher series, who's spot-on. I mean you cannot pick a better character than, oh, he's done so well.
Speaker 2:And he's like, embrace that role, like it's, it's fun. I mean, I was. I like the, the Tom Cruise movies yeah, I get it. Yeah, completely different, but you know, on its own I enjoyed it. But, um, this guy is doing such a good job and he just seems, he seems like a good dude. You know, I've seen interviews with him and I'm like that's really cool. You could, you could come into this a little aloof and not really caring about the original. You know the source material, because you know why do you need to? You got the job, you know, but he seems, you know he's, he's he's done such a great job and he looks like he's just got the right attitude.
Speaker 3:Well, I talked to him at Comic-Con and you're absolutely right, he is, he's read the books, he's a fan, so that probably helped a lot. But he really is a down-to-earth kind of guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3:They kind of jump in mediums is a big deal, like Sierra six fantastic, absolutely loved it. And here's a. I inadvertently got my daughter into the gray man because of CRO6 and we were driving to Louisiana and that's a long drive and I thought they were asleep but I had on my audiobook For the ride and, you know, when I realized she was listening in awake, I kind of turned it off because it's not exactly something for an 11 year old.
Speaker 3:Yeah and she yelled at me and so we had to keep listening and then we went to burner and she's very much into zoeah, so I know she's really looking forward to the chaos agent because we get zoeah back right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you get a lot of zoeah in the chaos agent for sure.
Speaker 3:But she hasn't even watched the movie for the gray man. But she has ryan gosling as court gentry, as her screensaver, because she has gotten so into the series.
Speaker 2:That is fantastic. I love hearing stories like that. That's really cool because you know when I write. When I write these books, I'm not thinking of an 11 year old 11 year old little girl but yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean when I told her that burner was the last one and she was gonna have to wait. So, she'll be excited when this one comes out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Great, you know, I like. Why he brought up the last one too is because, listen, I just started the orphan X series but now I know I have so many left to listen to. Yeah, because I go through so many audiobooks and like I need more. And that's like the same thing with this. I can't wait till your book comes out. I can't wait until the audiobook comes out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that experience of like discovering Frederick Forsythe in the late 80s and going, oh my god, this guy's got six other books. Or I discovered Clancy when he only had two other. I discovered him at Patriot games, so there was red october and and Red storm rising and uh, so I had two big books to read. But, um, you know, I love it. I love discovering an author and finding, you know, this guy's good or this lady's good, and they've got a whole bunch of other stuff. So I think that's a that's a fun aspect of it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I'm telling people now is like go back, start Getting into the court generally Sakura and just you know you have so many to catch up to. Yeah, we have a lot of author friends and stuff to have a core incredible series out. You know, like Brad Taylor's got like I mean seriously the Andrews and Wilson guys, yeah, and those guys.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, they're. You know, listen there's. There's some favorite authors out there. Those guys are some of my favorite as well is because you can get into their characters and their series and it doesn't seem like it's like I don't know, just You're relatable in a weird way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and you know, as a, as an author, you just have so much. You're just in awe of the, the volume and the quality that they put out. The fact, you know, I I collaborated on one book and it was a fantastic experience Well, the Clancy books, but I mean one of my own books I collaborated on. It was a really good experience, but it's not always a really good experience, and these guys have done it. You know how many books. I don't know how many books they have, but I mean, let's say, a dozen. It could be more and and they have this great relationship and I think it's just it's really cool to see it.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that's what Josh hood too it's like, because when we're talking about the, the shooting things, it'll be like Andrews Wilson, josh hood, and you know we're talking to everybody we can that in that kind of area that'll travel out for. And it's like Josh is a great author. You know he's a.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I would write a book with Josh. I mean that I hope to do that someday. In fact, the book that I just editing now. I Begged him to read it and he's like, yeah, sure, because I'm like, oh, it's got all these problems. And he came back and he's like, yeah, you know, I feel like this character is not reacting as emotionally as they should and you know it's like he would. He'd point out these little things and like, wow, that's so obvious. And I didn't see it because my brain was focused on another aspect of the story. You know, it's like I'm I'm trying to write this twist in, or whatever, and I'm forgetting about the fact this guy just realizes that his daughter's kidnapped, or whatever, and and Josh could just look at it, you know, with clean eyes and you know kind of a writer's sensibility, and go like this is what you really need to beef up right here. So it's cool, he's, he's very good at what he does. I.
Speaker 1:Like these author collaborations. And that's when the thing about the Andrews and Wilson guys is like my god, he do this. I've interviewed them a million times. I'm like, how do you guys like just collaborate, like that? They're like yeah, we just we just kind of writing, writing, writing back and forth, and it's like it's just like boom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they never really tell you what the secret sauce is. I've had the same thing, like, how do you guys do it? It's like, oh yeah, I'll write it and I'll send it to him and he'll write it and I'm like, come on, it's got it. Everything's more complicated than that, but I mean, the proof is in the pudding and they've turned out a lot. I'm excited about their Clancy book, actually have a PDF of it and I haven't had time to read it because I've been on deadline and editing and now this book's coming out. But I'm I'm probably gonna wait for it, the audiobook, and listen to the audio.
Speaker 1:So, speaking about the new book, the cast agent, what's court up to nowadays?
Speaker 2:Well, this book, like I think he said, it's the 13th book, so you know, for anybody that hasn't read any of the others, you can start anywhere in the series and this is a good one to start with and you learn who everybody is.
Speaker 2:And in this book you see him at the beginning, trying to live off the grid and stay low. He's in Central America, in Guatemala, with the woman he loves, as always, a carava who's a former Russian SVR for an intelligence officer, and the two of them are laying low because a lot of people are after them and they get targeted by some unknown force and they Realize they just a cat and mouse game develops and they realize there's a lot of eyes on them and they identify this, this entity targeting them, as the same group that is targeting all the world leaders of artificial intelligence and robotics. So as they dig in more and they do a little globe trotting, they realize that there is a revolutionary new autonomous weapon that is about to come online and Go into the hands of some foes. So they're trying to, you know, unsolve this mystery, unpack the riddle and and then stop this before this game changing Technology comes, comes to play.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think there's a bit of a teaser out there, isn't there about you know Zack being back into the the mix now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, zack's got a big role in this book. When I wrote the Clancy books, I Always. It was always tough for me because you have a big cast of characters that you sort of have to put into each one and I love all the characters. I mean there's no bigger Clancy fan than me. But as a writer you know when you've done your seventh book going like alright, I've got like 14 people that I need to have a specific role in this story because people want to see what they're up to.
Speaker 2:So when I, when the gray man Books turn into a series, I Told myself, okay, I'm not gonna get locked into having like this cast of characters that have to be in every book, so they'll come and go if I like the character and keep them alive. There's a few characters I've killed off and totally regretted. You know I'm like I need, I need them back. But you know I didn't want to get locked into putting, you know, everybody into every book. So I don't think that exactly was not in burner, the last book, but he's a big part of this one.
Speaker 3:Truth be told, relentless is one of my favorites of yours, just because of the interactions between Cort Zoya and Zack it. Just I love it. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:That's terrific. Yeah, you know, as I write these books, a lot of times I'll be writing it I'll be like, wow, I haven't put everybody together yet, because everybody's doing their own thing or there's something where they're star crossed and can't get together and it's like, oh, it's going to be great. And that last third of the book when everybody sort of like is in the same space and they can feed off each other, because, you know, the dialogue is a lot of fun to write.
Speaker 1:I like these little worlds too. You know there's always something I like picking up. That's one thing I like about your books is like something in the beginning or something in the middle is always going to end up somewhere else, yeah, and like the ski vest or whatever that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I knew I somehow like how the hell is he going to survive this? Yeah, okay, I'm like you're. There's something new technology out there I've no idea about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I like to. I like to come up with it as I'm writing and then go back and maybe foreshadow it in some way, or whatever. The ski vest was something I'd seen before and I just thought that would be really cool, although to not to criticize myself, but I'm going to criticize myself, I mean about 30 seconds before. So it's basically a vest that, once you, once it succumbs to a certain amount of G forces, it expands and it's a big like inflatable thing, which is cool.
Speaker 2:He gets knocked out of a train and this thing saves his life. But about a minute and a half before he's knocked out of that train, he comes shooting through the side window, crashing in and slamming on the ground and it somehow doesn't deploy. Then, so it it deploys when I need it to. And as I was writing the book, I was going to like wait, no, it would go off here and I'm like, okay, the old Mark Graeny would have really been hung up on that, but the new Mark Graeny doesn't have time for this. It's like, you know, I'll just I'll get a couple emails, and I honestly haven't gotten any emails about it Now. Now, anybody who?
Speaker 1:you know you're going to get some emails, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, if they do it, it's just lazy, because I I, I called myself out first.
Speaker 1:Okay, now we got to. I hate jumping back into Jack Reacher. You know you like Tom, I like Tom Cruise, good character. But there's a scene in the new Jack Reacher series where he comes up to a car and he just kicks the front end of it and knocks the, the airbag, the airbag deploys, and you're like I can't really see Tom Cruise just kicking in front of a car. And Alan Richardson, you're like holy crap, that dude, just yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But he's. That's the other thing about Ryan Gosling, too, is he sells court-genery Mm-hmm. He could be an everyman, he could be a gray man, he could fit in. I mean, you're watching a movie drive and you're like huh, and was that the place behind the pines where he's like almost like a meth head motorcycle carny guy? Yeah, the tattoos everywhere. It's like he can be the gray man.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I really.
Speaker 2:I was just shocked by how well, how much he understood the character, um, and I really don't know where that came from.
Speaker 2:I mean, I talked to the Russo brothers about the character, but I never talked to him about it, so I don't know if that was passed on to him. I don't think he could have possibly just gotten it from the screenplay, but just his way of just kind of being annoyed, you know witty, but at the same time would rather be anywhere else. You know, it was just kind of this way that I've crafted the character after these years and it was fun to see that on the screen because I'd read the script, the shooting script, you know, a year and a half before the film came out. And as an author it's like I figured I'd seen the movie because I'd read the script and I couldn't have been further from the truth. Once all the actors put their their spin on it, everything is is different from how you imagined it, and it was. It was a lot of fun to to watch him in that role. I hope he does another one.
Speaker 3:So that's a good point. It was like you know, have you sat down and kind of watched the movie and held the script and see how it actually played out and how it acted?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so lots of little dialogue bits are different and I was complimenting Steve McFeely, the the one of the screenwriters on that, and he's like you know a lot of that was Ryan on the day coming up with stuff, so that was interesting to know. So there's there's lots of differences, but most, mostly, it's the same. I've got, I've had the shooting script right here in my desk that they sent me.
Speaker 3:That is so cool yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it has my name stitched on it in case it got out beforehand. It would be my fault. My name's on every page but I haven't read it since the first time I read it. But it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's cool to look at the script and obviously they made a million changes from from the book. But I'm honestly okay with that because you know, I want people to have a reason to read the book and if it was, if it was a scene for scene, there's a. There's a few movies. Hunt for out October is a great example. That movie is almost seen for scene as the book was written. But usually when a when a film is adapted, there's a lot of changes, and this one there was a lot of changes. It wasn't as gritty but I really thought Ryan Gosling was perfect in it.
Speaker 2:I liked Reggae Jean Page as Denny Carmichael. I never would have thought to make the. I don't know if he's the deputy director of operations or whatever he was in the CIA. He's like 32 years old. That would never would have occurred to me to do that in my book, but I mean in Hollywood. It worked great and he, he was good in the role. So there were Billy. Bob Thornton plays a character who in the series is is is British. I mean, the book is British, but you know they got Billy Bob Thornton in the movie. So change the story, I'm all for that.
Speaker 1:Hey, listen, billy Bob's, you know one of the best actors out there. Yeah, I mean just spot on. Yeah, what do you? What do you got coming on the future? You said you had you're writing another series or another book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the second book in my Josh Duffy series will come out in June. The first book was called Armored and it came out two years ago, and the second one is called Sentinel. And I last year I went to West Africa to do some research, like in November I spent time with the diplomatic security officers at the US embassy in Accra, ghana, because that's where the book takes place. And my hero in the in the first book in Armored he was a private military contractor down in Mexico and now it's four years later he works for the State Department in diplomatic security and his wife is a political officer or a foreign service officer at the embassy there. And you know they're. They're in a very stable West African nation that just happens to undergo a coup right when they right when they're there. So you know it's, it's. It's a big action adventure, maybe a little less geopolitical than the gray man stuff, but also, you know, a very high octane story.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show and I'm looking forward to shooting some guns with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. I would really like that.
Speaker 3:I'd say we definitely need to make it happen. And then you have the tour starting next week for Cassie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the February 20th I'll be in Scottsdale, arizona, the 21st in Houston, 22nd in Dallas and I come back here to Memphis, and then the following week I go to Alexandria and Raleigh, north Carolina.
Speaker 1:And, go figure, I'm not going to be here. I'll be at a fire on a screening course that week. Oh you will. Oh good, I'll be in Georgia shooting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, when did I see you last? Oh, I was at. Was it a shot show right?
Speaker 1:Or the NRA. I think the NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we saw each other's shot show a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm probably going to bring my daughter to see you in Memphis, so we'll be in the middle of it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I really hope you do. That would be fantastic.
Speaker 3:She'll be the little one who's shell shocked and fangirling.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. I'd love to meet her. That'd be terrific.
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